The present invention relates generally to communications systems, and more specifically to protection switching for a communications system which falls back on the public switched telecommunications network in the event of a fault in a dedicated channel.
With current communications systems which rely on the public switched network to establish fallback channels in the event of a fault in a dedicated channel, human interventions are involved in the recovery procedure between the users of the regular channels and the supplier of the regular channels. Specifically, upon necessary of the regular channels, the user is informed of this fact from the supplier and makes a trip to the modem at each end of the channels to switch it back from the fallback channels to the recovered channels. In addition to this, the user needs to carry measuring apparatus to each end of the channels to measure their transmission qualities in order to confirm that they actually meet the required standards.